


tilt/shift

by maximumfudanshi



Category: MEJIBRAY
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Angst, Gen, M/M, Photography
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-03
Updated: 2016-05-03
Packaged: 2018-06-06 05:09:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6739351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maximumfudanshi/pseuds/maximumfudanshi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Koichi plays with tilt-shift photography. Tsuzuku struggles to keep up with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	tilt/shift

**Author's Note:**

> hesitantly suggested soundtrack: death cab for cutie: you are a tourist / okgo: the writing's on the wall

Tsuzuku was letting himself be dragged along again, as ever, swept up in his friend’s excitement, his mercurial passions. He watched Koichi disappear over the edge of the roof above him, and then began to hurry his way up the rusty ladder after him.

At the top, he left the gloom of the alley and came out into the open twilight. He’d let Koichi lead him along, hunting through back streets full of shabby shops, closed for the evening, until they’d found a roof access ladder they could reach, standing on an overturned milk crate. Koichi had insisted they needed to be someplace high up for what he wanted to do, tugging at his hand when he had hung back. And now here they were, looking down on the world. 

They were near the top of a hill, and from their illicit spot on the roof, they could see narrow streets zigzagging downwards, roofs of black shingle and red tile, strangers walking home. Koichi was crouched down in front of his camera bag, gingerly twisting expensive lenses. He looped the strap around his neck, tugged his hair free from underneath, and then turned the glassy eye of the camera out over the city. Tsuzuku stepped up behind him quietly- not too close- and tried to follow the line of his body to see what he was shooting. But it was always so hard to see what Koichi saw.

He would wait, confused as Koichi knelt on rough pavement to watch an iridescent beetle clamber through the green profusion of a potted plant, never seeing it until he was beckoned over, his mind always churning with other worries.

And by the time he could follow to where Koichi was pointing, to look for the city he saw in the clouds, it would invariably have been swept away by the wind. But Koichi would only laughed and say he liked it when the clouds were moving fast enough to notice, as though they had important places to be.

Tsuzuku could never keep up.

But for now he was just a step away, and Koichi had no place further to go unless he stepped out into the evening sky. He was trying to catch up, trying to understand Koichi’s joy, the small cardboard box he’s watched him open so excitedly that morning. An awkwardly disjointed looking lens, a lecture on the finer points of photography that had gone right over his head as he sipped his coffee and watched Koichi’s animated hands.

Koichi had promised he’d understand if he came along, and he could never deny his friend anything- even the photos of his own back, focus grotesquely sharp, spine a shadowy, twisted ridge in black and white. He couldn’t share Koichi’s pride in them, but he could hold obediently still when asked. So here he was, pulling his sleeves back down from where he’d rolled them up earlier, before the chill had set in, waiting loyally to see what new magic Koichi would show him. 

Koichi screwed the new lens on, twisted it and tilted it as he watched the viewfinder, hit the button that Tsuzuku had learned controlled the aperture, once, twice, to account for the weakening light. This was what he had called the golden hour, a picturesque description for the soft light of the sun low on the horizon.

Tsuzuku couldn’t understand what Koichi’s hands were doing, moving in such small increments, so he watched his face instead as he took test shots, frowned, cursed beneath his breath. It seemed that his presence had been forgotten until some time later, the disk of the sun in the jagged teeth of the skyscrapers, Koichi turned to him, smiling victoriously.

When he was motioned over he moved automatically, stepped up to look over Koichi’s shoulder as he brought up the photos he had taken on the little preview screen, flipped quickly through the hundred blurry failures he had taken in stride. Tsuzuku had always admired his strength of will, basked in it now as Koichi showed him a strange, tiny city, identical to yet completely unlike what he saw when he looked out into the real world. He leaned against the warmth of Koichi’s back, felt pink hair whip against his cheek as the breeze picked up. He let his friend show him the way he’d made the whole city into a toy for them to play with, strangers become tiny faceless figurines, busy intersections full of matchbox cars. 

He was always amazed to find himself in places like this- watching Koichi work magic on a deserted rooftop. Why was he the one always privileged to listen as Koichi conjured whole worlds out of the shapes he saw in the cracks in the sidewalk or in the swirls of the faux-marble when they lay in the bath together? Why did Koichi still wait for him as he fumbled in his darkness and fought to follow those wild leaps of thought?

The last picture on the camera was an ice-cream stand, brightly painted but shuttered for the night. When he searched the vista for it, he found it only after a long moment, so much farther away, so much less interesting through his own eyes than it was through Koichi’s. And then Koichi turned the screen back off, stepped away from him, stepped up onto the low wall that ran around the edge of the roof, let the wind tug at his oversized sweater for one terrifying moment as he looked out over his playthings. He spread his arms as the sunset painted his hair gold, purple, gold again, then he turned and looked down at Tsuzuku. 

He felt very small and very far away as Koichi looked through him, held the camera up to reduce him to a toy too- but stopped before he pressed the shutter. Then Koichi hopped down, grinning and the moment was past. Koichi was pushing the camera into his hands, wrapping the strap around his neck so that he could look through the view finder and see their miniature city in motion. 

The effect was strongest when he looked away from the people who still moved in some distinctly human way, towards the traffic or the deserted parks, playgrounds like the mess of tiny colored wires inside the effects pedal he had watch Koichi disassemble. The joyous chaos of the city was crisp and vibrant, flattened, entirely separate from the gritty truth and all his anxieties. Was this what it was like to be inside Koichi’s head? 

With the warmth of his friend’s shoulder bumping against his own, he kept the camera up to his eye until the darkness left only city lights twinkling in the viewfinder.

**Author's Note:**

> if they fuck on the rooftop, turn to page 20  
> if tsuzuku is just a pining idiot, turn to page 34  
> (i may end up recycling some of these ideas for roses, but i though this could stand on its own, so i went ahead and posted it.)


End file.
